This post was originally published on Democratic Audit. While encouraging more faith schools to open may help the government to meet its requirement to provide sufficient school places, the proposed policy is unlikely to yield places that are of a substantially higher quality than that offered by non-faith schools. The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (OFSTED), the official system for inspecting schools, now insists that schools enforce “values” which appear to be translated as promoting acceptance of homosexuality and endlessly emphasising that Britain has many people of different religions. To the best of my knowledge, Catholic schools are not all that expensive - saving of course universities which used to be Catholic, still try to peddle the Catholic name, but are not really Catholic in any meaningful sense - like Notre Dame. Recently, two Christian schools run by Evangelical groups have been told that they fail to meet the required level of correctness. But how much of their success is down to their intake? Rebecca Johnes is Research Officer in Education at the Education Policy Institute. There is some suspicion that the inspectors were anxious to find some evidence that the children were bigoted and narrow-minded. If government proposals go ahead, oversubscribed new faith schools will soon be allowed to select all their pupils according to religion, rather than only half of them. What prospect, then, for Catholic schools? A typical Catholic primary school (ages 5-11) will be near, or even adjacent to, a Catholic church, be dedicated with a specifically Catholic name (St Joseph, Sacred Heart, Rosary, Our Lady Immaculate) and display statues and crucifixes. Children’s lives are ruled by the lure of the computer, the mobile phone, fashion fads, and the “must-haves” of a consumerist era. A rigorous curriculum – Most students take four years of mathematics, history, English, science, foreign language, and religious studies. The Scottish Catholic Media Office declined to comment on the report. If government proposals go ahead, oversubscribed new faith schools will soon be allowed to select all their pupils according to religion, rather than only half of them. (For our purposes, a faith school is one with a designated religious character recorded on Edubase.). For faith schools as a whole, the difference in raw attainment (measured by capped GCSE and equivalent point score) amounts to pupils achieving nearly one-third of a grade higher in each of 8 GCSE subjects compared with non-faith school pupils. For the overwhelming majority of children in Britain, attending school is the most practical option. A âsocial selection scoreâ was calculated for each school, comparing the proportion of pupils eligible for FSM in the school with the proportion of FSM pupils in the local area. My conclusion is: NOT NECESSARILY. There may be other guest speakers: representatives of various Catholic charities or—rather less likely—from Catholic movements enthusing about the Faith, as part of an evangelistic outreach. In terms of raw attainment, the report found that faith schools do achieve higher results than non-faith schools at both Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 4. The scandalous, glorious point of Christmas, Property rights are fundamental to supporting religious freedom, The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has released this statement regarding the audience its prefect, Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, had today with Pope Francis: The Holy Father today received in audience Archbishop […]. A score of 1.0 means that these two proportions are aligned; a score below 1.0 means that FSM pupils are under-represented in the school; and a score greater than 1.0 means that FSM pupils are over-represented in the school). In the United Kingdom, there are many 'local authority maintained' (i.e. Figure 1: Pupil characteristics at Key Stage 2, by religious character of school. And there needs to be a sustained effort to encourage young practising Catholics to choose teaching as a career, which is not easy as today education is associated with bureaucracy, problem families, tension, and the above-mentioned pressures from OFSTED. I am with you, till the end of time - says the Lord. Sometimes parents get resentful about implied criticism of their own values: “How dare you tell my child it’s wrong to miss Mass on Sunday!”—and sometimes the teaching is confused, carried out by teachers who are themselves not practising Catholics or who are not well-formed in the faith. Likewise, at secondary level, the proportion of pupils achieving 5+ GCSEs at grades A*-C including English and maths was higher in most categories of faith school than in non-faith schools: 60.6 per cent at Church of England schools, 63.2 per cent at Roman Catholic schools, and 57.4 per cent at non-faith schools. Roman Catholic Admissions policy: Non-selective Open help text for Non-selective opens a popup Unique reference: 125311 Website: School website opens in a new window Apply for a place: Secondary opens in a new window Financial information: Schools financial benchmarking opens in a new window Open help text for Financial information opens a popup Further information: Get information about … Beyond comparisons with national averages, the report also measured how representative different schools are of their local communities. Scores are capped at 3.0 for secondary schools; these scores should therefore be interpreted as 3.0+. Click here to sign up for our newsletter. Data from Value Added demonstrates that, according to Ofsted inspections, Catholic schools rated consistently better than average on all criteria. Teachers can tailor their lessons to their class more effectively and offer more one-on-one support. To accept cookies, click continue. Most teenagers in Catholic secondary schools are non-practising, and many of their teachers are not genuinely devout and knowledgeable, February 4, 2015 Analysis is restricted to those pupils with both current and prior attainment. Catholic schools must bravely serve all students, including same-sex attracted or gender … Required fields are marked *. 0 The Church will not find this an easy one to tackle. Courage and goodwill are crucial, as is good leadership from bishops. Note that due to the relatively small number of pupils in non-Christian faith schools, and their different characteristics, this analysis is restricted to those that attend Church of England, Catholic and Other Christian faith schools. My son will be starting school in August and … Pupils in England's religious state schools scored significantly better examination results at seven, 11 and 16 than those in community schools, figures show. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. So they are free: no fees to pay. There are also, of course, a number of independent—i.e., fee-paying—schools. But the overwhelming majority of children in Britain attend state-funded schools, and for most people the term “Catholic schools” means those that are within this state-funded sector. 4. Perhaps we are going to have to take a lesson from Poland in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s: when the Communist authorities made it impossible for schools to teach the Faith, the Church took on the task and gathered children in churches after school on weekdays in classes to do it. In a recent green paper, Schools that work for everyone, the government set out a series of proposals to increase the number of good school places available in England. We parents may enroll our kids in the best schools that money can buy but when we … The much-vaunted ‘Catholic school effect’ was mostly explained by the fact that Catholic school pupils were usually from Catholic homes. Australian research comparing the incidence of racism in Catholic and government schools also concludes that religious schools are beneficial. Overall, with respect to raw attainment (measured by average point score at Key Stage 2), primary school pupils in faith schools make around half a termâs more progress than those in non-faith schools. Academics. It is all very attractive. Often however, they promote a secular thought process (think Georgetown, Notre Dame). Your email address will not be published. Catholic schools participate in the evangelizing mission of the Church, integrating religious education as a core subject within their … The darker shading refers to the characteristic being described (e.g. Research by the UCL Institute of Education found that pupils from Catholic and Church of England families did well because of their upbringing, not because of their school. The temptation for Catholic schools to succumb to political correctness is going to be great. Parents were appalled to find that the OFSTED inspectors seem to have spent time asking peculiar and intrusive questions: one child told her mother tearfully that she had been asked if she “felt uncomfortable in her body” and several children were asked about lesbianism and homosexuality. In addition, although there are a number of secondary faith schools in which FSM pupils are over-represented, nearly 1 in 10 faith schools are at least as socially selective as the average grammar school (median score 0.2); this compares with around 1 in 30 non-faith, non-selective schools. The Catholic Education Service is an agency of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales This isn't my main reasoning though. All over the country, nearly 100 percent of Catholic high school students graduate; for public schools, that number is 78 percent. Across all categories of faith school examined, the proportion of pupils achieving Level 4 or above in reading, writing and maths at Key Stage 2 was equal to or higher than the equivalent figure for non-faith schools, with 83 per cent of pupils in Church of England schools and 85 per cent in Roman Catholic schools reaching this benchmark, compared with 81 per cent in non-faith schools. It will be necessary to insist on the rights of Christians to teach Christian doctrine and morals in Christian schools. My thanks to the authors for this competent work. Derived from analysis of the National Pupil Database, 2015. This is a clear demonstration that sectarian schools (aka faith schools) are simply a way for middle class parents to separate their children from what they see as the dross. Since Catholic schools are often smaller than their public counterparts, there is often a better student-to-teacher ratio. The CofE in particular … At Key Stage 4, the premium associated with faith school attendance remains but is much reduced, falling from nearly one-third of a grade in each of 8 GCSE subjects to just over one-seventh of a grade in each of 8 GCSE subjects; this is a relatively small attainment gain. Derived from analysis of the National Pupil Database, 2015. There will be daily prayers and hymns, Masses to mark special events, celebrations for the school’s patron saint, Nativity plays at Christmas. In particular, disadvantaged pupils are under-represented at faith schools, while those with high prior attainment are over-represented. But in addition to all these challenges facing Catholic schools, something new has emerged. 5. In 2016, the church supported 43,800 secondary schools, and 95,200 primary schools. In July 2012, we triggered a European Commission investigation into employment laws for UK faith schools, although this was, unfortunately, ... We are also deeply concerned that the Church of England and Catholic Church both seem to see the academies programme as an opportunity to take control of community schools with no religious character that convert to academy status. Guidelines issued to OFSTED inspectors in the wake of all this have resulted in a ridiculous situation: no one dares to suggest that the Muslim problem is a specific one, and so there has to be the suggestion that Christian schools are in danger of becoming hotbeds of dangerous religious extremism. Median for each group is highlighted. Furthermore, given that faith schools on average admit fewer pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds than non-faith schools, there is a risk that these small gains would come at the price of increased social segregation. For primary schools, 74% of Catholic schools were judged outstanding or good compared to 66% … Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Defending Catholic education does not mean just celebrating families who can teach their own children, but helping those who cannot. Best-schools.co.uk is the main website of Education Advisers Ltd and aims to provide comprehensive, up to date and accurate information about the vast range of opportunities for students within the UK independent schools sector. At Key Stage 2, the difference in attainment between faith and non-faith schools is largely eliminated once pupil characteristics are accounted for in this way. The Not So Good Food for thought there. Also, the smaller class and school size can help foster a more tight-knit community. Most teenagers in Catholic secondary schools are non-practising: devout pupils who attend Mass regularly get teased or even bullied, and it is not easy to find genuinely devout and knowledgeable teachers who are passionately committed to teaching the fullness of the Catholic Faith, and capable of doing so. By removing the cap, the government hopes that faith groups will be encouraged to open new free schools and increase the supply of good school places, under the assumption that such schools will provide a good quality of education. The problem, of course, stems from the discovery of extremist Muslims taking over schools in Islamic areas of Britain’s cities and, against the wishes of most of the Muslim parents, imposing rigid codes of Islamic behaviour and belief, in what has become known as the “Trojan horse” problem. (function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]='EMAIL';ftypes[0]='email';fnames[3]='MMERGE3';ftypes[3]='text';fnames[1]='FNAME';ftypes[1]='text';fnames[2]='LNAME';ftypes[2]='text';fnames[4]='MMERGE4';ftypes[4]='text';fnames[5]='MMERGE5';ftypes[5]='text';fnames[6]='MMERGE6';ftypes[6]='number';fnames[7]='MMERGE7';ftypes[7]='radio';}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true); Pope Francis on Christmas Eve: The poor manger was rich in love, Pope Francis pens Christmas letter to ‘beloved people of Lebanon’, Exiled Belarusian archbishop will be allowed to return for Christmas, First known nativity scene figurines can now be seen in St. Mary Major Basilica, New California senator backed by pro-abortion, pro-LGBT groups. The main purpose of Catholic schools is to form students in Catholic faith, morality and social values. A whole generation of Solidarity activists were taught their Faith this way. Note that due to the relatively small number of pupils in non-Christian faith schools, and their different characteristics, this analysis is restricted to those that attend Church of England, Catholic and Other Christian faith schools. Formal and Material Co-Operation « Catholic Insight: […] calls our conscience, that act of judgement on our own moral actions, on which I offered some principles from…, How is a feticide committed sincerely less lethal to a child than a "frivolous "one? Figure 6: The attainment (capped GCSE and equivalent point score) of pupils in faith schools, pupils in non-faith schools, and a group of pupils in non-faith schools matched to similar pupils in faith schools at the end of KS4. Is the Covid Sars-2 Vaccine Morally Licit? To find out more about cookies and change your preferences, visit our, Real-World Approaches: Freedom of Religion or Belief, LSE Religion Scholars Network 2019 day conference. The analysis went on to control for pupil characteristics (including deprivation, ethnicity, and prior attainment), by identifying a control group of pupils attending non-faith schools with similar characteristics to those at faith schools. I don't understand the connection…, Pope Francis to offer Christmas Eve Midnight Mass at 7:30pm, Pope Francis tells CDF to take “decisive action regarding cases of sexual abuse”. The darker shading refers to the characteristic being described (e.g. The schools concerned were ordinary state schools, but in areas where the population was almost entirely Muslim. I remember my mom had concerns at first about the religion aspect of it, and not wanting me to be confused about the differences. Figure 3: Extent to which different types of secondary schools are representative of their local area. But, on the whole, the evidence is that Catholic primary schools do a good job of introducing children to the Faith. It has become a cliché to say that the only reason Catholic churches are so well-attended is that young parents are desperate to appear to be enthusiastic, visible members of a parish so that when they approach the priest to ask for the all-important signature on the school application form, he will know who they are and be glad to sign. However any improvements come at a price of overloading other schools with less able children, as well as introducing to the idea that children of different faiths are so different they can not be educated together. Certain faith schools, especially Catholic ones, often dismiss this by comparing their statistics of children on free … It is fairly standard for pro-life speakers to go into Catholic schools. Should you require … Figure 2: Pupil characteristics at KS4, by religious character of school. A number of independent—i.e., fee-paying—schools it seems that the children were bigoted narrow-minded! 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